Bau House

There are so many specialty cafes in this country that we could go to one a week for the next 3 years and not even come close to scratching the surface.  I'm always reading other people's blogs and trying to find new places for us to try.  When I read about this cafe I immediately knew we had to check it out.  As a mother there are a lot of things I do for/with my girls that I would never do if I were by myself.  This adventure definitely falls into that category.

This cafe was called the Bau House, but when spoken sounds like Bow House.  Bow as in bow-wow, like a dog.  It was a cafe where there were tons of dogs running around in it for you to pet and give treats to.  If you know my girls at all you know they LOVE, LOVE, LOVE dogs.  Any dog we ever come across they immediately run up and start to pet it and talk to it.  They love dogs.  And if you know me at all you know (how do I put this...) I'm not such a big fan of dogs.  In fact I'm pretty sure I have some sort of force field around me that as a dog is approaching me they hit the force field, bounce off it and walk the other way.  But I knew my girls would just love this place, so one Saturday we set out on this adventure.  (Since it was a Saturday Russ got to join in on the fun.)

My directions were pretty good, but as happens so often in Korea that once we found the place it had moved.  It took us a while to find it and we were all disappointed it wasn't where we thought it was going to be so we stopped for a little bit of a pit stop.

Drinking some Gatorade at a 7-11.

We passed this awesome looking old church that they had turned into a restaurant while we were out exploring.

Unfortunately, the picture doesn't do it justice, it was so big that this was all I could get to fit in my camera screen.

It took us a really long time to find the correct location.  But when we did the girls were very excited.  (Because things change so fast in this country, I never tell them where we are going until we actually arrive at the location.  This saves me lots of questions about it and it also lessens the disappointment if we can't find it or if it is not in business anymore.) 

There were dogs EVERYWHERE in this place.  You could bring your own dog to play with the other dogs, or the owner of the place has like 15 (or maybe more) dogs of his own that are there for you to play with.  Most of the owners dogs are rescue dogs.

The first section of the cafe was for little, "lap" dogs.  And the whole back of the place was for the bigger dogs.

Within 10 seconds of us entering this was how I found Lucy.

You don't have to pay to play with the dogs, but if you want to feed them treats you have to buy the treats from the place and you have to order one drink per person.  So we ordered 4 lemonades (it just didn't seem like a sit and sip coffee type of place).

It was so loud in there that not a lot of conversation was happening...unless you were talking to the dogs.

There were probably 15 dogs in the big dog section and they had completely free rein of the cafe and definitely took advantage of it.

Yes, this dog is drinking straight out of the water drain.  I did not drink any water after I saw this.

The girls (and Russ) had so much fun petting, feeding and playing with the dogs.  The girls picked their favorites and gave them extra treats and attention.

I just sat and watched.

My force field was at full strength that day.  Thankfully, most of the dogs were pretty smart and only tried to approach me one time then realized it wasn't worth it.  That lady behind me looks like she might have a force field too.

There was one dog that broke the barrier though.

This was the closest I got to a dog the whole time we were there...in my defense, I'm also allergic to dogs so I was trying not to rub my eyes most of the time we were there. 

This place would never, ever fly in America, but over here no one seemed to think anything was out of the ordinary.  I will say that the employees did an excellent job keeping the place clean.  Someone was walking around the entire time we were there using the swifter and cleaning up dog fur.  And every time there was a doggie accident, an employee was cleaning it up within seconds.  I was very surprised that while the place did smell like dog, it didn't stink. 

While it may be a while until we go back again, it was a fun adventure for all of us.

I'm not a huge germ freak, but we all pretty much bathed in hand sanitizer when we were done.  After we left we went out to a Mexican restaurant (which was delicious) and headed home.